I harvested the last of the asparagus in my former vegetable garden before I turned the cows into the south pasture for the second time this season. It has been a three week streak of me doing farm work in every available hour, and I am feeling smug about my accomplishments. So many seasons past I [...]
I am trying to go with the flow. I thought it would improve my technique to know the origin of the phrase. According to UrbanDictionary.com “go with the flow” was first known to be used by Marcus Aurelius who ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180. I remember my Grandma Best, a lifetime school [...]
A snow storm from the midwest and a rain storm from the Atlantic collided over the farm during the night, and this morning it’s a complete white out. There was no sunrise, just a cross-fade from black to murky grey to silent white. I started morning chores early because the cows and the goats were [...]
The farm is my lava lamp, always in mesmerizing motion. The chickens swish from one side of the yard to another, across the snow, looking for food, hiding from the hawks. The cows and the goats circle the hay feeder, wander over to the water trough, take a lick of salt, head-butt each other, and [...]
Winter is coming. It’s not here yet, but she’s knocking at the door. I have the thermostat in the house set at 60. The upstairs rooms are closed for the season. The heat up there is turned off. I have moved my office to the table in front of the windows beside the wood-burning stove. [...]
It rained and rained and rained and rained. For almost three days. Some say we got six inches. The Green River is fat. My pond is a quarter of the way full. The ruminants aren’t drinking out of the water troughs because there is so much water on their food, and the chickens are tripping [...]
When we started farming, one of the things Chet and I realized was how repetitious our life had become. We always wrote notes to ourselves. But on the farm, we found ourselves writing the same notes over and over again. So eventually we wrote permanent notes and kept them handy in the kitchen where they [...]
Trim the goat’s hooves, brush-hog the pastures, take out the compost, clean the barn, muck the holding pen, clean the nesting boxes, muck the chicken coop, get the broken hay ring out of the pasture, put the new hay ring together in the pasture, fix the fence in the south pasture, weed the vegetable garden, [...]
My hairdresser is thinking about farming. She asked me which season is harder, summer or winter? Summer is definitely harder. As soon as the warm weather hits, the pressure is on to start seeds, get the garden planted, fix the fence lines, set up the pasture rotation, move the cows onto grass and get the [...]
Every group of living things has a pecking order – the most dominant creatures are at the top, the weakest and therefore most submissive creatures are at the bottom. It’s obvious among the chickens – the most dominant birds get the highest rungs on the roost, and the weakest birds get their feathers pecked until [...]